you should get comfortable with all 3 especially if you are progressing on HC. Practice makes perfect, not gona say that Demo is hard but its a spec that has its nuances and requires some get used, timing and Fury management.

All 3 specs are viable but its a big plus for you as a warlock or any pure DPS to manage to play comfortably all 3 specs

What your saying about Demonology makes total sense, and while I'd like to think I'm an average Destruction player, I would say I'm below-average in Demonology. It's nice to hear that there *is* room for me to grow though, and that with enough time and effort spent I'll be rewarded. It's no surprise my Demo DPS is so bad then.

If you could recommend me two resources to up my Demo game, what would they be? The Demo FAQ here on MMO? Maybe a guide on Icy Veins or EJ?

Finally if your saying that (roughly) the results for Demo are 30, 60 and 100 based on skill with the spec, what would you rate Affliction?

The demo guide here is pretty good, but be sure to read the last 8-10 pages of posts too.

As for affliction, I dunno. I'd probably rate it a 50, 85, 100.

Being very bad at it means you'll do terrible, but being average means you can do great damage. There's still decent room to grow though.

If you are using Destro well...keep using Destro. All three specs are viable and there is no reason to lose sleep over switching specs around just because there is a small theoretically difference.

Exactly. If you are a top guild raiding hardmodes, the difference becomes a bit larger as you kind of have to play Demo or Destro for AOE fights. But as for normal modes, all specs are perfectly viable. And especially if you are contemplating Destro or Demo...play Destro its a lot more fun imo & easier obviously.

Just hit 90 on my Warlock yesterday (loving it - KJC is an amazing talent). I am a big big fan of Demo since Vanilla, and was really interested in the MoP changes during beta, but I felt that the final product at MoP launched felt a bit strange.

Currently I'm just doing 5 mans mainly, and the problem I'm having is that destro is so much easier and fluid when killing trash (and there's a lot of trash in 5 mans). The problem I have with demo is that doom takes too long to do anything on trash. What are you supposed to do on trash? What's the "rotation"? I have been putting corruption on every mob, HoG x 2 and Hellfire. But it seems like Meta is kinda useless on trash? I dunno. Can someone explain what to do in 5 mans as demo?

Bosses are fine. I like demo on bosses. Corruption + Doom up, Hog x2 (clipping the end so you get 2 stacks and max duration) Soul fire with MC > Shadowbolt, switch to meta to refresh Doom and Corruption. Guessing this is right? Do you ever use Soul Fire in demon form? Seems to do nice damage but really burns through Fury, but then is that necessarily a bad thing? Don't really know.

I dont use Soulfire in demon form, unless i have a shit laods of fury, im not sure the exact numbers but i think its very close on numbers. Its good to save soulfires while above the execute phase though, as they build up fury very quickly.

As for trash AoE, i dot a few up while running in and do the hand of guldan clipping while dotting, then switch to metamorph and put immo aura on and spam the laser beam til im low on fury and use carrion swarm. Then i just hellfire stuff to gain fury back. I dont know if this is the best thing to do but i have found it works.

After playing solid Demo for a week including challenge modes, i never want to play Destro again :P

Oh man, please stop crying as soon as you have to bind a few more spells and actually need to use 1 pet attack... Demo isn't that hard to understand... Keep dots up, pop meta when you proc, soulfire when you proc, refresh corrupt with meta, that's pretty much it, the rest being to use your CDs with meta and imp swarm when you get a haste proc.

Destro is as difficult/simple to master. Just track Procs use your powerful spells when they pop and use the little tricks of every fight to get the most out of your havoc/chaos bolts.

I really don't see why people always whine sayin destro is too easy. If it's that easy, why don't we see you at the top of WoL rankings ?

I dont use Soulfire in demon form, unless i have a shit laods of fury, im not sure the exact numbers but i think its very close on numbers. Its good to save soulfires while above the execute phase though, as they build up fury very quickly.

As for trash AoE, i dot a few up while running in and do the hand of guldan clipping while dotting, then switch to metamorph and put immo aura on and spam the laser beam til im low on fury and use carrion swarm. Then i just hellfire stuff to gain fury back. I dont know if this is the best thing to do but i have found it works.

After playing solid Demo for a week including challenge modes, i never want to play Destro again :P

LOL I am a total noob. I totally forgot about Void Ray. That'll be what was missing then... lmao.

What spell does Void Ray replace? Fel Flame? I almost never use Fel Flame so that might be why I forgot about it.

i think harvest life is the optimal choice to replace void ray from what ive been reading, i would like a verification to this, as im not exactly sure but it seems like the logical choice to me, Aerodyne

well void ray is a valid choice, the problem with it is that it costs 10 more fury to use than harvest life and it only hit the mobs/adds in a straight line, so chances are you wont hit all. altho the dmg from void ray is higher than that of harvest life, you can more easily hit every target that needs to be dmgd, so hitting 10 targets for 1,5k less dmg should be better than hitting 4-5 targets for 1,5kish more but ofc if the targets happen to line up properly then ofc you should use void ray.

I switched to Destro/Demo from Affliction after T14 and it took me a while to maximise my dps even though it's arguably the easiest of the three specs. All specs take a while to learn and you'll find the same with Demo. The main thing to bear in mind with it is to always be ready to switch to meta form when trinkets/buffs proc to keep an empowered Doom up as long as possible. Only refresh it if it's about to drop off or you get more procs. I'm simplifying it, but start there and you should see an immediate improvement. The trinkets you have make a huge difference too - Wushoolay's Final Choice and the Lei Shin ones being the most powerful for dot classes imo.

I didn't realize that Meta weaving your DoTs was such an important part of Demonology, I can see now that it is a big part of the skill ceiling. I don't have any of the greater Demo trinkets either. I can understand that with the buffs they give Demo needs to start out a little weaker.

It's a shame that Command Demon and Imp Swarm are so good (funny thing to say eh?) because the spec already feels very busy. In some ways they feel like one too many straws on the camel's back. But I guess I'll get used to them.

Oh man, please stop crying as soon as you have to bind a few more spells and actually need to use 1 pet attack... Demo isn't that hard to understand... Keep dots up, pop meta when you proc, soulfire when you proc, refresh corrupt with meta, that's pretty much it, the rest being to use your CDs with meta and imp swarm when you get a haste proc.

Destro is as difficult/simple to master. Just track Procs use your powerful spells when they pop and use the little tricks of every fight to get the most out of your havoc/chaos bolts.

I really don't see why people always whine sayin destro is too easy. If it's that easy, why don't we see you at the top of WoL rankings ?

Clearly demonology is harder than destruction.
It used to be even harder than in MoP though.
I remember counting 11 keys for the base demonology 'rotation' - I think it was in cata or the xpac before. Dmg was ok but for the complexity one wasn't rewarded as compared to say combat rogue or arcane mages.

I haven't enjoyed playing affliction for years, ever since the number of dots was decimated and super dumb dot cloning mechanism was introduced at the cost of impotent dot damage. Not to even mention the disappearance of goodies such as mama burn.

Other warlocks will have opposite views and that's fine.

Thing is, we are blessed in MoP with 3 highly competitive specs, unless you are racing for world first you really can choose the one whose playstyle you favor, demonic gateway brings insane utility and we are so resilient!

Think about warriors or hunters, they have it a lot less easier than us in ToT.

i would say the fact that destro need to use ROF in their single target rotation is what puts it slightly ahead in terms of difficulty coz it is so damn clunky, and as i said earlier, destro has more tools they need to use to do well. demonology is pretty straight forward, atleast to me, and that is the whole point of this thread, its based on opinions so there isnt any right or wrong way. and as silmarieni said, we got it much much better than most other classes in the game, as we have 3 utterly viable specs, while the other classes only have 1, 2 at most.

Thing is, we are blessed in MoP with 3 highly competitive specs, unless you are racing for world first you really can choose the one whose playstyle you favor, demonic gateway brings insane utility and we are so resilient!

Think about warriors or hunters, they have it a lot less easier than us in ToT.

^This. The best part of MoP for me was the class revamp. We'd gotten little things, that could have been awesome but generally they came to naught. Incinerate was a really neat looking spell (not a fly-through-the-air-ball-of-whatever like everything else,) too bad that warlocks in BC had all their talents geared toward shadow damage so it was pretty much worthless. Fel Flame was the "hey, you want green fire, here you go!" handout that ended up being a dps loss in a lot of cases, though it did have some occasional use. Meta was interesting, but honestly, I don't remember much about demo otherwise in those days, so..

I loved testing all three specs out, getting a feel for them, and while I agree that Demo is a more complex playstyle than Aff or Destro, it just doesn't quite do it for me in the sense of fun. That's me, though.

i would say the fact that destro need to use ROF in their single target rotation is what puts it slightly ahead in terms of difficulty coz it is so damn clunky, and as i said earlier, destro has more tools they need to use to do well. demonology is pretty straight forward, atleast to me, and that is the whole point of this thread, its based on opinions so there isnt any right or wrong way. and as silmarieni said, we got it much much better than most other classes in the game, as we have 3 utterly viable specs, while the other classes only have 1, 2 at most.

No clunkier than Unholy DK's needing to drop D&D on cooldown.

The only catch is there's no cooldown really on RoF, so you've gotta use a timer or something to warn you when it's about time to refresh. (or eyeball it.)